Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Armed with a computer model in 1935, one could probably have written the exact same story on California drought as appears today in the Washington Post some 80 years ago, prompted by the very similar outlier temperatures of 1934 and 2014.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

Search form

Perfect Storm for ITC Patent Reform

Seven weeks ago, the International Trade Commission announced its decision to ban the importation of some late model iPhones and iPads after finding that Apple had infringed patents owned by rival Samsung. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Verizon Vice President Randal Milch has publicly implored President Obama to exercise his power to veto the ITC’s decision. Such a move could be just the thing to prompt real reform of the ITC’s disruptive role in the patent system.

The prospect of a presidential veto of an ITC exclusion order is pretty exciting. The statutory power of the president to disapprove a decision by the ITC has only been exercised five times since the ITC was created in 1975 and the last president to use the power was Ronald Reagan. Disapproving this new order would certainly turn some heads, and it’s not as unlikely as you might think.

Anti-ITC sentiment has been growing steadily in recent years. In 2006, the Supreme Court made it more difficult for U.S. courts to issue injunctive relief in patent cases, dealing a major blow to patent trolls who buy-up patents for the sole purpose of litigating them. The Court’s holding did not apply to the ITC, making the trade agency a more attractive venue for those unsavory litigants. Now the ITC has decided that it can issue injunctions (as it has in the Apple-Samsung dispute) even when the patent owner previously agreed to license the technology to all who offer a reasonable royalty. More and more observers are coming to recognize that the ITC’s powers are inappropriate and need to be reined in.

A presidential veto of the Apple ban could be just the right thing to push Congress or the agency itself to implement real reform. The House has held a number of committee hearings on the topic in the last two years, and bringing ITC remedies in line with district court practices is included in the Obama Administration’s newest outline for patent reform.

Even the ITC’s staunchest advocates would rather have transparent and predictable limits than face the specter of ad hoc nullification of orders resulting from expensive litigation. As Verizon’s Milch explains in his closing paragraph:

If the administration signaled that it would veto ITC relief orders in instances where courts would have found such orders inequitable, it could discourage parties from clogging the ITC’s docket with such cases in the first place. Then the White House could, mercifully, find it unnecessary to veto ITC decisions, perhaps for another 25 years.